


Worse than the Disease

by avalonjoan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drugs, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, M/M, Narcotics, References to Drugs, also just, three in a bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avalonjoan/pseuds/avalonjoan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John has phenomenal powers of deduction and persuasion, Sherlock has reasons for being stubborn, and Greg is a good friend as well as a worried boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worse than the Disease

John stepped into the flat and immediately know that something was amiss; more importantly, he knew exactly what it was. He’d been living with Sherlock for almost three years—it only made sense that he would have picked up some skills of deduction. Sherlock’s coat was slung over the arm of the couch, but his shoes were nowhere to be seen—either he’d returned to the flat, dropped off his coat, and left again, or hadn’t bothered to remove his shoes when he arrived. John saw Sherlock’s keys on the coffee table—he could have forgotten them if he went back out—but his phone lay inches away, and Sherlock never went anywhere without his phone. So he was in the flat. The shades were drawn, but only recently—the fabric of John’s chair was still warm from the sun. And Sherlock only closed the shades in the living room for one reason—he was having headaches and the light bothered him. Situation deduced.

And of course, the note on the table next to Sherlock’s phone that read, “Migraine. Upstairs.” only confirmed that John had figured it out correctly. 

John followed the directions upstairs, and when the choice came down to the three rooms there, he traced the hollow click of porcelain to the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. Doing his best not to let any more light into the nearly-dark room, he stepped inside.

Sherlock was seated on the floor, slouched against the bathtub, arm resting on the toilet bowl, his hair damp with sweat and his face looking even more gaunt than usual. Squinting, he lifted his head from where he was resting it on his knee, and John quickly closed the door behind him. John maneuvered as quietly as possible, keeping the knob turned until the door was fully shut—there was no telling what sounds were unpleasant for Sherlock when his migraines were this bad. 

Kneeling beside the detective, John wordlessly reached over and felt Sherlock’s pulse. Elevated. Judging from the fact that he’d found the other in the bathroom, Sherlock had been sick—that didn’t usually happen. Voicelessly, with the quietest whisper possible, he asked, “You already took your sumatriptan, right?”

“Of course.” Sherlock’s words were breathy, and his respirations were strained, like those of someone in the middle of lifting heavy weights. “Isn’t working.”

“Pain?”

“Ten.”

“Nausea?”

“Six, now.”

“Dizziness?”

“Seven.”

“Photophobia?”

“Nine.”

“And, phonophobia.”

“Eight.”

John did up the math in his head: forty. This meant heavy-duty painkillers. They’d devised the numerical system when Sherlock’s headaches started getting worse as a way of tracking their progress. Sherlock generally continued with his daily life up to a fifteen or so, maybe twenty if a case was particularly riveting. Above that, he’d stay home for a few days, but up until forty, he’d deal with it alone. Well, thirty-nine. He’d never had a forty before. 

“Sherlock, I’m going to get you something stronger, alright?” Because that was John’s job. He’d written a prescription for Sherlock when it was clear that it was simply migraines, after everything else had been ruled out: tumors, neurodegenerative disorders, aneurism, even parasites. The two of them had discussed the matter for a long while—John had, at first, been ready to hand Sherlock a bottle of hydrocodone for times like these, but Sherlock had surprised him by refusing—not the medication, but custody of it.

Every day with Sherlock managed to bring new things to light. Once, it was his long-unrequited infatuation with Lestrade. Another time: quiet revelations about his childhood with Mycroft. But this time, it had been his history of drug use. Mycroft had mentioned it like he mentioned most things: enigmatically. John had assumed stimulants were Sherlock’s drug of choice from the way he carried on when he didn’t have a case to devote himself to. But Sherlock explained that it was just the opposite: narcotics. They had allowed him to slow his brain down. Made it possible to get through university. Made it so he could actually interact with people his own age, or with people at all. Everyone had turned a blind eye—after all, Sherlock was functioning well for the first time in his adult life, and it wasn’t uncommon for the brilliant or the wealthy to have a bad habit or two. But when Mycroft found Sherlock unresponsive in his flat, barely breathing, it was determined that the younger man’s drug use couldn’t go on.

So John had kept the drugs in his possession—a small prescription, only five pills at a time, certainly enough for the worst migraine. Sherlock didn’t want to see them, didn’t want to know where they were, and didn’t want to be responsible for deciding when he would take them. Forty had been the cutoff, with the caveat that John would ultimately make the decision, regardless of the number. He’d worried that Sherlock might increase his ratings of his symptoms if he knew that he would get the medication; instead, John found that Sherlock tended to underreport, often refusing the drugs even when John offered them for below-forty ratings that seemed severe enough. John had never known Sherlock to be afraid, but it was clear that the detective was hesitant to take the prescribed pills, aware that the possibility of readdiction laid in each small tablet.

If any other medications had worked, John wouldn’t have resorted to narcotics. Triptans were always the first course of action, and they worked for a while, but not much as of late. Sherlock carried them on his person, took them as soon as he felt that telltale twinge right above his eyes, and he kept taking them even once they stopped working, just in case something changed. But that clearly hadn’t happened this time, and John couldn’t bear the thought of Sherlock continuing in this state for another minute, let alone the hours it usually took the pain to lessen. He took his keys out of his pocket and unscrewed a small cylindrical keychain, shaking out a single while pill. In the dark, he found Sherlock’s hand, pried open his clenched fingers, and pressed it into his palm. 

Sherlock shook his head, and then moaned, a shuddering, heartbreaking whimper. “No,” he breathed through gritted teeth. “I’ll be fine.”

“Please, Sherlock.” John touched Sherlock’s cheek, tilting his head slightly to face him. “I’ll stay with you the whole time. We’ll pay attention for cravings after. If it’s not worth it, we’ll never use them again. Please. You can’t go on like this. Do it for me, if not for yourself.”

Sherlock was very still for a while. John could practically hear the thoughts buzzing through the younger man’s head—looking for patterns, weighing benefits and risks, comparing the chemical structures of hydrocodone and heroin, opium, methadone, morphine, oxycodone. 

In one fluid movement, Sherlock tilted his head back, tossed the pill into his mouth, and swallowed. John let out a sigh. He wasn’t sure what his next course of action would have been. “Good. Let me know when you feel well enough to move and we’ll get you to bed.”

“Can you text Greg?” Sherlock asked, his voice tired.

John nodded. “Of course.” Using a towel hanging behind him, John shielded Sherlock from the device’s glow as he alerted his friend’s partner to the situation. John was never sure how much the detective inspector knew about all of this—he assumed he knew about Sherlock’s history, but since John was largely responsible for taking care of Sherlock in times like these, it was possible that he wasn’t aware of the pervasiveness of his lover’s old addiction. Slipping his phone back into his pocket, John smoothed his fingers over Sherlock’s hair, doing his best to comfort the other. “He’s leaving the Yard now. Shouldn’t be long.”

“Help me up.”

“What?” The medicine needed more time than this to take effect. There was no way the Sherlock was feeling better enough to move.

“Can I sleep in your room? I don’t think I can manage stairs.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait a little longer? You’ll feel better.”

With slow, deliberate movements, Sherlock shifted to his hands and knees and began to stand. John rose quickly, extending his arms under Sherlock’s and holding him upright. “You alright? How’s the dizziness?”

“Worse, but I can manage.” Sherlock turned out of John’s scaffolding embrace and opened the door, leaning on the knob for support. He moved his other hand to the doorway. John followed Sherlock closely, since the other apparently only wanted help in getting up, not in walking to the bedroom. Sherlock moved methodically, one step at a time, keeping his shoulder against the wall. At the threshold of the bedroom, John moved ahead, slipping inside to close the shades before opening the door fully and putting one arm around Sherlock’s waist. He guided the to the center of the room and lowered him onto the bed.

“Do you want to change for bed?”

Sherlock murmured in dissent, lying back on the bed and kicking his shoes off. Keeping his eyes closed, he undid the buckle of his belt and the clasp of his jeans, and, raising his hips off the bed, slid the garment off, revealing his long, pale legs. In the similar fashion, he unbuttoned his shirt and twisted out of it, leaving him dressed in only a pair of boxers and socks. John drew the sheet up from the foot of the bed and waited for Sherlock to settle, with his head on the pillow and legs fully on the bed, before covering him with it. He moved the chair from the nearby corner closer to the bed, reaching over and taking Sherlock’s hand.

“I’ll be right here if you need me,” he assured Sherlock, who nodded and held to John’s grasp, squeezing tighter when the occasional wave of pain overtook him.

It took a while for the muscles on Sherlock’s face to relax, but shortly afterward, the younger man fell into the half-sleep that narcotics bring. Greg had shown up somewhere in the middle, kneeling beside Sherlock and brushing his hair off of his forehead, kissing him, and looking very, very concerned. John had assured him that Sherlock would be fine, and Sherlock had, rather intoxicatedly, taken Greg’s hand, reassured him of the same, and tugged him onto the bed. The DI obliged, taking off his shoes and unfastening the top few buttons of his shirt, and lay down alongside the younger man, who welcomed more kisses with an uncharacteristically wide smile and unfocused eyes.

John stood to leave. Sherlock protested, his words calculated, even—trying to press through the weakness the drug afforded him. “Stay here, please. I don’t want to be without my doctor—without you—like this.”

With a quick look to Greg for approval, John nodded. “Of course.” He went to sit back down on his chair, but Greg reached over Sherlock and grabbed John’s hand, tugging him onto the bed. 

“Might as well be comfortable if you’re going to stay with us,” he explained, lying back down and draping his arm around Sherlock’s waist.

John watched as Sherlock snuggled—an action he’d never thought the other was capable of—closer into Greg’s arms, and the DI brought his hand up to protectively cradle the back of Sherlock’s head. Where he was sitting on the bed, John’s thigh was pressed against Sherlock’s back, and he was conscious of every slow breath Sherlock took. Every now and then he would measure the other’s respiratory rate, figuring he needed to do something as the doctor in the room, but he knew that Sherlock hadn’t been worried about what would happen while he was still under the influence of the hydrocodone. The danger started when the chemicals were gone.

But that was hours away. For now, Sherlock, the wiry genius with the dark past who made a hobby of solving crimes on a regular basis, would stay curled up in bed while that brain of his sorted itself out, between John and Greg, like a child seeking safety from a nightmare.


End file.
